Ethel Voedisch-Price

1924 - 2013

Ethel Voedisch-Price was born in western Massachusetts and graduated from the School of the Worcester Art Museum in 1948 having focused on painting.  She went on to study at the Art Students League and finally at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where printmaking was her concentration.  She came to Cape Ann in 1968 a year after marrying Edward Price and her work here focused on mixed-media and monotypes.  For a short time, Ethel was part of a group of women artists who ran a cooperative studio on Center Street in Gloucester called the Women’s Gallery at Center and Main.

Passionate about poetry and literature, during the 1980s, Voedisch-Price began a series of print portraits of the poets of Cape Ann.  The series included depictions of Charles Olson, Peter Davison, Vincent Ferrini and T. S. Eliot.  The project was originally underwritten by a grant from the Gloucester Arts and Humanities Council.  In 1991, poet Anne Sexton’s portrait was added to the group.  (Sexton had visited Cape Ann during the 1970s with Rockport artist Barbara Swan.)  Interestingly, the year Voedisch-Price received funding support from the Gloucester Arts and Humanities Council, so did Sinikka Nogelo who was producing a film on the Folly Cove Designers, Barbara Erkkila who was preserving her historic photographs of the granite quarrying industry, and poet Vincent Ferrini for publication of volume three of his series Know Fish.